The time rushes on this year and so grows the popularity of the Hostel!

It is very difficult to control, manage and operate a Hostel all alone and there are always running projects and new things to implement and improve. So I need a little help from my friends; the volunteers.

This post is dedicated to the volunteers who helped throughout the year with different projects in the Hostel and putting their good energy and vibes!

So the deal is: Who wants to be part of the team and Hostal and want to have a different experience than just traveling and being a tourist, can write me and showing his interest in any way (click here). In exchange for the offered help I offer free food and accommodation. Many people bring special talents that are very useful, but there are also people who help with everyday stuff to do at Hostel!

One of the first volunteers (in April) who were helping here at Hostal was the young couple from Berlin, Germany; Lusa and Hannes . They helped with various tasks and also helped painting the bricks of the Suite, a job that required a lot of patience and good humor! They also have a blog of their trip through South America … (visit their blog here). People like Luisa and Hannes , are not only looking for a place to sleep and free food, they want rather to learn more and be part of the local culture, practice the language and to help and feel part of a project. Now we are good friends and hope to visit them in Berlin soon. Thanks for the help guys !

Magdalena (Magdalenka) is another of the volunteers who came to help and be part of the Hostel memories. She brought a lot of energy to the place and was always very active. She came in August.

Magdalena is from Poland and was traveling for several months in South America and during her trip she worked as a volunteer in different places. During her stay here, she helped painting the place at the entrance, fixing the floor of the Suite, cleaning the garden and many more. Thanks Magdalenka !

Another volunteer who came in September was Loic . He is from France and is traveling hitchhiking over two years worldwide . He is a systems engineer and at his stay at the Hostal helped not only painting, or with the customers; he also made the Hostel website with an amazing quality. I had previously given the task to an agency in Hamburg (qube medien) but the webpage they made was to throw it away. Loic designed the best website that I could ever imagine for the Hostel (visit the webpage here). Merci Amigo!

Maiko is a volunteer who lives in La Paz and comes every weekend since the last three months to help. She works for a Japanese organization in La Paz as a teacher for textile design and teaches natural dye techniques.

Maiko san costurando las cortinas

Maiko has different talents and is always willing to help. She does not only help with the everyday stuff at the Hostel, then she also made the curtains for the common room and participated in the exhibition of textile art we had in the Hostel a couple months ago. Arigato Maiko San!

For the mural project came Sam. She is from South Africa and she is traveling around South America since a couple of months ago.

In only two weeks stay here at the Hostel, Sam painted an amazing mural at the Hostel entrance. The mural gives a colorful and happy touch to Hostel. Sam knew very quickly how to go on and what to do. She worked with only little material on it and made a huge thing out of it. Thank you Sam!

First of all I want to thank you all those who are sending me emails with feedbacks and other nice thoughts. I know that there are many family members, friends and other followers who constantly watch the blog. I want to specially thank to all the people from fundraiser that contributed to make this project a reality. Without you this project wouldn´t be possible. You are part of Hostal Chawi. I want to also apologize for not keeping you updated with the state of things at the hostel.

I am so happy to communicate you that the hostel has been running since a couple of months and is very successful. The last couple of days I have been reading reviews from some of the guests at the Hostelworld website and I am extremely happy to hear that the people really like the hostel, the food, the atmosphere and enjoy being here. It is very nice to see that the project is really turning into reality and the results of a one year arduous work are fully satisfactory.

This post is about the last part of the bathroom´s constructions. As you saw in the second part we already have finished the skeleton of the building and now we are going to install all the missing part such us doors, toilets, showers and shower curtains.

I had in mind some ideas for two bathrooms. First I designed the doors and gave the contract to the carpenter. While the doors were being made, Felix put the stucco on the walls until the surfaces were flat.

The next day I started to attach the doors, which was actually very difficult because each door weights almost 40 kilograms. To protect the door from humidity I covered it with one layer of organic linseed oil.

There are still some time consuming things to be done with the outside part of the wall. When I was wondering how to proceed with the work I thought about the decoration of the houses in Chefchaouen (Morocco), which gave me inspiration and some ideas.

I started covering the wall with a mix of sand and cement. This work took me very long, because it requires lots of practice and experience. I had never made this kind of work on such a big wall before, but I somehow managed to do it.

To make the wall look more cheerful I thought about drawing a Gecko, which seemed to me a good idea, because it wasn´t so complicated as other designs and it brings some kind of joy, in my opinion.

Die Deutsche Fassung wird bald gepostet!

In February we were continuing working on new Projects and and receiving guests… so did the work increase but also diversify.So we began with the next project the: The stairs. We needed the new stairs to connect the upstairs patio with the new bathrooms, the terrace, the bedrooms and the downstairs patio.

After deciding the size that stairs would have, we used a wooden board to make the shape of the stairs and then a thread to establish the inclination that stairs should have. To build the stairs you have to put the stones one next to the other and the cement/sand mix between the stones. The nice side of the stone must be to the outside.

The work is finished and the next thing I´m thinking to put here, are a flowers garden and some veggies like tomatoes, paprika, zucchini, some chilies, basil and others. The thing is… we are now in the sunny dry season and we are gonna have to wait a little to start planting the stuff. Until we wait, we are gonna harvest some mandarins, oranges, lemons and some coffee.

During those days we did a job that had to be done since long time ago … and that was to cut the eucalyptus tree which unfortunately was growing too close to the house and its roots were damaging the building… So we had to cut the monster of over 20 meters high and his two brothers that had at least 15 meters… This job was not easy, because the trees were very close to the house and if they had fallen on the wrong side, they could produce several damages in the house… The pictures will tell you the rest

In the first days of the month the foundation for the toilets were finished and we were ready to start building the walls .

To build the foundation was in the end not as difficult as I thought… You just need to build a wooden case with the desired shape, fill it with stones leaving space for the drainage pipes and pour the mixture of cement and sand on it and between the stones.

Ones we had the four foundations ready, we started to build the walls with bricks. This work is in my opinion very nice because it needs dedication and a lot of patience. For every brick we put, the distance to each other and the height must be precise and at the same time the level has to be exact. For this work we use a spirit level and thread.

What we do is to put the cement in a height of about 2 cm and the bricks on top in a line with each other with the same distance of 2cm. Every brick must have the same height and the same distance to each other. Then you do the same thing again on top of the next line of brick and then again until the wall is at the desired height and we would not forget to leave space for the door frame.

When the walls were finished, started working on the showers and bathrooms floor. As material for the floor, we used flat square stones that you can buy on the way from La Paz to Coroico… they are rocks from the Andes!

After the floor was finished with the desired level, we began to work decorating the walls. We have also used stones that we have around in our land and it looks good with the atmosphere of plants.

Die Steine werden mit Zement an der Wand geklebt.

El progreso

While the walls were being decorated, we started to prepare the material that we would use for the roof… For the roof, we wanted to use the roof panels that had taken from the old roof out (see Back al it/De vuelta al trabajo http://wp.me/p2Hj8o-5c). But before we can use the old roof panels for the new roof, we need to clean them first and paint them with a special waterproof paint… The work sounds easier as it is!

Ones we have the materials the next step is to make a wooden box and put the stones inside to make a solid ground before pouring cement over. We must also led some space for the pipes… we did´nt put the pipes in the beginning because we need to move them later … we only put a banana trunk to led the space… so the cement does not fill the space where the pipes need to go.

Hello to all readers and followers of the Blog. First of all I wanted to inform you that the project ” Hostal Chawi” had a very unexpected changes:

Unfortunately a few weeks ago ( on December 06.12) Erin suddenly decided that this is not what she wants and a couple days after that she left the project to go back to the USA.

As crazy as it sounds, the project undergoes a radical change! with a really unexpected situation for me and the Hostel.

And I wanted to say (me Inti) that after Erin left the project ( on December 06.2012 five mounts after we started ) this place is still being a home for me because I left all my other things in life behind to come here with Erin an built this Hostel: my live in Germany, my family in Germany, the possibility to see my daughter again, my job at Mercedes Benz in Germany, my friends in Germany and everything I had built in in the last ten years in my life… so it was a difficult decision for me to stay here alone in this project, because I thought maybe to go back to Germany and recover my life there, but I have just made too much to come here with Erin to build this place that I want at least to try.

I´ll continue building the hostel and I am starting to build a new Life!

I´ll put soon more pictures an stories about how are things going with the project the last days!